Bonkers Blog December 2013

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In the news a year ago was the case of a young woman, Cait Reilly forced to
work without pay in Poundland under the government’s Workfare Scheme. Whilst it
can be argued that Jobseeker’s Allowance should be earned the courts thought
otherwise and in October 2013 the
Supreme Court found in favour of Ms. Reilly. She had earlier
won her case in the Appeal Court but The Department of Work and Pensions appealed the decision.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of being paid allowances for not working, the
scheme exposed the grasping cheapskate nature of the employers involved, so it is
not too surprising to see Bexley council topping the list of those unscrupulous employers.

The Daily Mirror reported on Saturday that Bexley had taken on 71 people on no
pay, mainly to keep the library services going after that the council made 35
workers redundant. A more comprehensive report on a dedicated anti-workfare
website explains that Bexley has moved on to an alternative scheme.

As it says, Bexley council exploited a lot of local young people who probably
had their benefits stopped; and for what? So that the chief executive can pocket
two and a half times the salary recommended by the Secretary of State and
councillor families can take home £45,000 a year for no hard work at all.

Exploitation by Bexley council is nothing new of course. Their contracted care
workers are paid the minimum wage and only for the time actually spent with
their clients. Over Christmas few are prepared to wreck their family
celebrations for so little money and staff shortages become inevitable.

One disabled lady known to me who gets four care worker visits through the day
plus through the night attendance was astounded to see the same face turn up
repeatedly over a full 30 hours! The scheduler phoned her during the last of
those visits to ask if the care worker could do another session but fortunately
accepted the refusal without complaint.

Freezing council tax while continuing to line councillor and executive pockets
comes at a high price.

The cabinet member responsible for driving down care workers’ pay and putting
the needy at risk is Chris Taylor. Electors of Sidcup and Lamorbey ward take note.

Well that's it, another year effectively over, one step forward (recording of
council meetings) and one step back (yet another Conservative councillor exposed as a liar).

Many thanks to those who sent Christmas greetings, something I rather neglected
this year. I rather liked the comment from the secretary of the Sidcup Community
Group who said “Just imagine what Bexley council would be like if nobody was watching”.

Another Paul L. sent me a long ‘poem’ set to the well known Gilbert & Sullivan
tune from The Pirates of Penzance and entitled
Bandits of Bexley, which put the
boot pretty firmly into Bexley council’s backside which I am still in two minds about
publishing, and someone who has made something of a study of Bexley’s child care services
sent me a ‘Christmas Card’ bearing the associated picture. No it’s not the Belsen Concentration Camp in
1945, it’s Bexley’s Special Needs School, Woodside.

Lastly something I forgot to do when I first noticed it a week ago. I haven’t
seen as much in recent months of the Bexley care workers who visit a disabled
friend four times a day. These, frequently very young, women are paid a penny
above minimum wage on zero hours contracts and no travel expenses to maintain
councillor Chris Taylor’s proud boast that he pays the contractors less than any
other nearby borough. The thing I forgot to mention is that Teresa Pearce, MP
for Erith and Thamesmead is collecting information about the practice. You may
see what she has to say on her website and there is a survey form for care
workers to leave comments.

Another one bites the dust! From Bexley MP James Brokenshire’s predecessor to Labour MP
Ian MacShane, Mick Barnbrook has brought down half a dozen MPs with his many
complaints about them. Five have finished up in prison for malpractices for
which Mick was the principal complainant. Ian MacShane was
sentenced to six months today.

MP’s can now breathe more easily, Mick has assured me he has no intention of reporting any more
MPs, he says he is fully occupied as a member of the Bexley Action Group following up wrong doing
by Bexley councillors and officers and the police officers who protect them.

The text below is taken from the report on MacShane’s false accounting by the
Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. As you can see, those pursuing
political wrong-doing have to be very patient people.

Everyone who follows
Bexley’s mayor on her Twitter account
will know that her lead up to Christmas has been one long round of fun events and Carol
Services and no one begrudges her that, but it is a far cry apparently from the Christmas
Bexley council metes out to the children in its care.

A message came from a reader who I could identify but probably shouldn’t. She
is not a new correspondent having provided information in the past and I am
hoping she is just as accurate this time, for there is no easy way to verify
what she says. On the other hand it fits in well with what OFSTED said about the
way Bexley council treats children in care.

The lady writes about Woodside Special Needs School which is quite hard to track
down. It’s given a page or two on
Bexley council’s website but is hard to find
because the address given leads to Bexley Sports College. It takes a bit of Googling around to discover and confirm that they are one and the same. As the
original email says, the following is a shortened extract, it really does look like a prison.

For the first time I went there and as I got nearer to it it reminded me of
concentrations camps. I was totally mortified. How can the council spend so many
millions of taxpayers’ money on the town centre when those poor children and
staff are being sent to such a terrible place?

I am still shaking inside at the knowledge that my poor grandchild has been made to
go there. When my daughter told me it was like a prison I honestly thought she was
exaggerating. I have never been to an area where such a place existed, where children
are hidden out of view in the most inhumane conditions.

Please go and take photos and show the council up and let the people see just
how Dickensian things are when it comes to caring for those in this borough
whose children cannot find a place in a clean, bright and cheerful school.

Woodside Special Needs School had no decorations up for Christmas, no Christmas
tree no children’s work on display. It was the most pitiful Nativity I had ever
seen. The children and teachers did their best but the surroundings both inside
and outside the building is beyond anything I ever expected to seen in the year
2013. SHAME on Bexley council.

I am crying now as I still cannot believe what I saw.

The writer went on to discuss her conversation with the staff at the school
and absolves them of all responsibility. She believes they are doing everything
they can afford under the conditions imposed by Bexley council. Maybe mayor
Massey could have appealed for a Christmas tree
for the school instead of her parlour. Ironically the benefactor is a near neighbour of the school.

Dumping the borough’s history on an unwilling Bromley wasn’t the only thing
on the Agenda at last Wednesday’s cabinet,
the Health and Wellbeing Strategy was due for discussion too. I’d like to be able to report what was said
by the principal speaker and what her message was but unfortunately she spoke too
quietly for the public address system to carry it as far as the public gallery.
I gave up the struggle to hear and hoped that my recorder might be picking up more than I was.

From a combination of the little intelligence recorded and a search of the council website
I think the speaker must have been Dr. Nada Lemic who is the Director of Public
Health appointed last April. I heard the words obesity, diabetes, dementia and
smoking several times so one might guess they are her priorities. When she stopped
speaking Teresa O’Neill said that Bexley was doing a good job. Not good enough I
would have thought; several times recently I have been in the vicinity of the
Clock Tower and struck by the huge proportion of people who are smoking. More
than half by my estimate and a good number gorging on something bought from the
numerous burger vans licensed by Bexley council. The passage leading from that
area towards Sainsburys often stinks.

Councillor
Chris Taylor said he was particularly pleased to see dementia taken seriously
because Bexley’s demographic made it vulnerable to the costs involved.

Councillor Katie Perrior was concerned for the disadvantaged children born in
the north of the borough. Councillor Colin Campbell was the realist who referred to previous council reports into public health, one inch
thick and glossy he said, but they came to nothing and no one was held to
account. The council had “lost its way and we mustn't let it happen again”.

Councillor Don Massey said he was keen to increase activity levels to improve
health. More exercise will save money on diabetes care etc. Perhaps he had that
in mind when advocating hiking to Bromley to study history.

The meeting then moved on to the subject of Children’s Services which have been
abysmally poor. Fortunately there has been only one
Rhys Lawrie but with the same senior staff in place, confidence in the
future may be misplaced.

Councillor Perrior said that things are massively improved now even compared
with last August because of the new computer system and recruitment but
councillor Chris Ball said that alarm bells will be ringing if the proportion of
monitored cases not being progressed quickly enough doesn’t soon improve.
Currently an unacceptable 20%.

The meeting ended exactly an hour after it started by which time the public
presence was reduced to little more than those
Mr. Tuckley advised me to
dissociate myself from. Difficult when I am made to sit next to Elwyn because he
likes to take photos.

As you can see, he sent me his pictures, all 30 of them. However only five different councillors
are included because Bexley council insists that photography must be from a specified position.
One which provides a poor view to only half the chamber. I think I’ll ask Elwyn to contact
Eric Pickles’ office so that they know about Bexley’s half hearted compliance.
He’s much better at badgering his way through to his office than I am.

Because the different web browsers do not react to every situation in the
same way the code that runs Bonkers is sometimes compromised to permit all browsers to
work adequately well. The differences between browsers is not constant and
hopefully diminishing. As a result some of the compromises made in the past are
no longer appropriate.

This has recently affected the menus and associated icons and extensive changes have
been made over the past 24 hours to improve matters. During that time the menus etc.
may have been misplaced or even unavailable. The situation is now relatively stable
but may undergo further changes over the weekend. If a problem is apparent it may help
to refresh the browser to get rid of any old instructions that may have been cached.

This may be an appropriate time to say that Internet Explorer 11 is extremely
fussy about saving cookies which will prevent the style configuration (save text
size choices) facilities from working. It can be managed but requires various settings
to be changed. Easier to use a different browser but not Safari, that
won’t display the menus at all!

Last night’s cabinet meeting was unusual for two reasons, firstly the
chairman Teresa O’Neill conducted it in a reasonable enough fashion and
secondly she had permitted a deputation. I have not seen that before at a cabinet meeting.

I sat at the provided table with my notebook while Elwyn Bryant sat alongside
with his camera. The positioning is far from ideal and both of us could see only
half the councillors. I placed my recorder in front of Elwyn hoping its
microphones would have a better ‘view’ of proceedings.

The deputation was against the crazy idea of transferring Bexley’s archives to
Bromley and it was presented by Ms. Penny Duggan. I say crazy because while
there may be merit in transferring or merging back office functions to another
borough, moving customer/public facing facilities is a different kettle of fish. How will
those without cars or the wherewithal to pay the bus fare get a fair crack of
the whip and the projected £41,000 saving doesn’t even match what the
responsible cabinet member and his wife plunder from council funds? But what did
the experts from the historical societies have to say about it?

Ms. Penny Duggan
was their representative and she said she was backed by 3,251 signatories of a petition
and the transfer would be “a catastrophic and irreversible mistake”. Councillor
Don Massey had said that the archive is not a statutory requirement but Ms.
Duggan countered that that was not entirely true. The 1972 Local Government Act requires
the council to make proper arrangements for items in its custody which includes
public access and educational needs. The Historical Manuscripts Commission is
monitoring the situation.

Bexley council has not been able to say how the £41,000 saving is to be
achieved, she said, but Bromley council has stated in an FOI response it has done no work on the
proposal so it has no knowledge of possible costs and saving and was not
expecting the proposal to be taken forward.

Bexley’s archives are currently rated the best in London and shouldn’t be
destroyed. Projects undertaken because of the present facilities on offer have
attracted £200,000 of grants in 2013. That was unlikely to be repeated following
a transfer to Bromley. Local history is one of the few ways a council can engage
with its residents, it encourages the community to have respect for its
surroundings and that is something to be proud of.

Councillor Massey was the first to ask Ms. Duggan questions. He began by saying he did not
wish to pick holes in Ms. Duggan’s argument but he needed to balance the budget.
He wanted to know what the exact issue was. Was it accessibility? Ms. Duggan
said it wasn’t, it went further than that. She mentioned the borough’s
reputation and abandoning its heritage speaks volumes for those to whom it has been
entrusted. Massey dismissed the statutory argument but offered to meet Ms. Duggan
to discuss a possible compromise. She agreed of course but sounded less
than enthusiastic about Massey’s ideas. Those that revolved around volunteers
received short shrift. Volunteers are important but some things require a
qualified archivist if valuable items are not to be mistreated or destroyed.

The volunteers do the cataloguing of artefacts and if their numbers fall because
they can’t quickly and easily access the material it becomes useless. No
catalogue equals no access. At present those volunteers give talks which
encourage more interest by residents. A lack of volunteers would see that come
to an end.

Councillor Melvin Seymour asked how much the volunteers could be asked to do but
Ms. Duggan reiterated the need for some qualified help. She cited Erith Museum
which failed because it could only call on volunteers.

Councillor
Philip Read said a transfer to Bromley might only save £41,000 but
lots of only forty one thousand pounds soon add up and there is a budget
reduction to be met. The regular cabinet attendees are only too well aware of
that. Six councillor couples can each take that sort of sum away annually and
several have and do. Had Ms. Duggan thought how else savings could be made? That
was difficult, she said, because no one would tell her what made up the £41,000.

From that point onwards Ms. Duggan was not allowed to speak but councillors
continued to ask each other questions.

Councillor John Davey thought everything would eventually get digitised which
would improve accessibility and lower costs. It is the way forward he said.

Councillor Chris Ball (Labour leader) asked the first probing questions not specifically
designed to pander to Don Massey’s plan. He asked where the £41,000 came from
and if an Equalities Impact Assessment had been made.

Teresa O’Neill said they had not asked for all the answers, she did not want all
the answers, because that is why they were genuinely consulting people. And in
repeat mode said “alI the answers are not there at the moment because we are
genuinely consulting people”. I found that to be unusual logic but I’ve checked
the tape a few times so I must have missed her point.

Don Massey said the £41,000 is mainly staff savings and an Equalities Impact
Assessment had been done. Chris Ball asked the killer question. “Is the Impact
Assessment publicly available?” Teresa O’Neill had to admit it hadn’t been done.

Councillor Ball said there wasn’t going to be much time to study the public’s
comments, do the Assessment and “get Bromley on board”. Was he being
pessimistic, he asked.

A council officer not visible from my position said that all these things were
being worked on with a January target date. Then they may approach Bromley.

Teresa O’Neill then closed that section of the meeting by saying a decision would be
made by March and twenty-odd people trooped out of the chamber.
None of them with any cause for optimism I would have thought.

Two days
after I mentioned that the ‘town centre’ of Lesnes ward is a rat
infested tip and that the local Conservatives had done nothing for the area
in the past four years, the party Tweeted that the old Harrow Inn site is to be
boarded up. Click image for clearer picture. Coincidence or shame? Who knows.

Maybe the Harrow Inn would still be standing if business rates weren’t levied on
empty properties - and you can’t blame the Tories for introducing that rule,
relief was abolished in the 2007 budget. But maybe an empty
pub would have attracted squatters.

Nobody came up with anything the local Conservatives may have done for Lesnes ward and except that they refer to Crossrail
on their website, it’s no good
looking for a list of achievements there. Presumably they weren’t very interested in that dangerously
narrow footpath outside Bedonwell school either, they left
that to a parent who has since decided to stand for UKIP. What Labour may have
planned is unknown to me, they don’t seem to have a local web presence.

The IPCC and the obscene blog investigation
Just because there is nothing much going on here doesn’t mean I have been
slacking. Yet more correspondence with the Independent Police Complaints
Commission this week prompted a long trawl through the files checking out a few
things. After 30 odd months there is a danger I’ll forget the details.

I noticed that when the IPCC upheld my complaint (18th September 2013) that the Met’s
Department of Professional Standards found no fault with those officers who were determined
to find no evidence in what became known as the Craske affair, I should have been contacted
by them. One letter suggests 15 days might be a reasonable time but I have let
it go three months. It’s the same with the Subject Access Request, six months
have passed with barely a word, just a two month old broken promise to reply
within two weeks.

Complaints against councillors
Bexley council’s FOI response about complaints made against councillors
in the past three years showed
that
only one in 49 had been upheld.
I suggested this might be the deputy mayor who had a run in with an elector in 2010
and was ‘convicted’ rather late in the day, but I was wrong.

It turns out that 100% of complaints made by members of the public in since the end of
2010 have been rejected by Bexley council. The only complaint upheld was by one councillor
against another. This was the “tosser” comment let forth in the heat of
argument at a council meeting in 2011. I don’t propose to regurgitate the names
of the protagonists as it seems to be all rather petty in retrospect, especially
as neither of those concerned are “tossers’.

Councillor Cheryl Bacon’s Closed Session
Answering questions that might reveal a lie must be difficult; which reminds me,
Will Tuckley replied to
my last email.
No answers of course, and nobody has done anything wrong - except me. I’d like to read
between the lines that Tuckley is not entirely comfortable with having to brazen
out Cheryl Bacon’s lies but I’ll refrain from further comment.

Councillor Gareth Bacon’s closed mind
Another subject which seems to be eluding straight comment is that ridiculously
narrow footpath outside Bedonwell school. The issue was pursued with some
initial success by a concerned parent, Chris Attard, and Bexley council’s attitude
towards child safety and what was said about it a a council meeting played a big
part in interesting him in becoming a councillor. I always suspected that decision would
not help his parent/campaigner role at Bedonwell school and once discussed my fears with him.

Chris’s latest blog entry gives some details about Gareth Bacon reneging
on his promise to make children safer, he seems to have found reasons to put the
scheme on ice. It would be best to read the story on
Chris’s own website as a brief summary
may not do it justice.

Incidentally, Chris’s reference to 30,000 visitors to Bexley is Bonkers each month may give
the wrong impression. The blog gets looked at around 30,000 times a month but an awful lot
of views will be by repeat visitors. My best guess for unique visitors would be more
like 5,000 a month, and some of those are from outside the borough. If you don’t
like how Bexley council operates, please spread the word.
www.bexley-is-bonkers.com is the best link to hand out.

No
one has come up with
anything
that the Conservative administration might have done for Lesnes
but I did receive an email regretting councillor Allon’s move to the ward
from neighbouring Belvedere. The message said he has been very helpful, it is
implied that it was more than once, and that he was the only source of help. I
am pleased to pass that on and add that other than his, in my view, backing the
wrong horse over the new ASDA, you will not find anything remotely negative about
Kerry Allon on Bonkers. The fact that the council leader hasn’t offered him a safer seat than
Lesnes suggests he is not one of her favourite people. Maybe he is the lone good
guy, all the other northern sitting Conservatives have been transferred to safer
seats according to
the latest info published by Bexley Conservatives. There is
still plenty of time for them to change their plans though.

For the past two weeks
my Contact form has been the subject of spam attacks
which are threatening to drown the genuine messages. For reasons I don’t
understand, the anonymous facility only works if I bounce the mail through a
third party webmail provider but when I closed my Hotmail account and opened a
new one the first spam item came through no more than two minutes later. I’ve
changed things so that the Hotmail address is only accessible from the Contact
page, ordinary email direct to it is junked and I put a tell take mark on messages
sent via the Contact form. I have concluded that someone has found a way of
filling in the form in some sort of automated way. As a result the Contact form
may be closed down over the holiday while I make more drastic changes.

A message that did get noticed among the spam was one which suggested that
Bexley council doesn’t understand its responsibilities under the equalities
legislation and that it has put this notice at the end of
its current crime survey.The
message says that the first four are all what I believe should be called ‘sexual
orientation’ but transgender isn’t. It is no more relevant to sexual
orientation than whether or not you have had your appendix removed and whilst it
is not something I have thought much about previously there is a certain amount
of logic to it. A transgendered person is going to be male or female and can be
associated with any one of the first four conditions.

I thought I should look to see what the law said but failed to come up with
anything definitive. However the Civil Service instructions to its departments
say the questions should be as shown. Why Bexley council chooses to exceed its
requirements and ask irrelevant and possibly illogical questions beats me.
Incompetence I suppose.

As
you probably know, I live in the ‘poor’ end of the borough, Lesnes Abbey ward to
be precise. There’s not a lot wrong with it, my neighbours are all good,
Bexley’s only Zone 4 station is close at hand and Lesnes Abbey park is kept
looking beautiful all year round. What’s not to like about the Lesnes area? I’d say
it is the fact it has no heart; no centre and no shops to speak of. If it does
have a centre, it’s a rat infested bomb site, the erstwhile Harrow Inn. Demolished
about four years ago and Bexley council has
refused every offer to redevelop it.

There is now a branch of
ASDA a mile away which has helped bring a bit of life
to the downtrodden north despite the best efforts of councillor Kerry Allon to
have the plans rejected. He succeeded first time around! Now
he plans to stand for election
in Lesnes ward (previously Belvedere). It’s a brave move, all the local Tories have
done a runner for 2014. Unsurprising, their majorities were as low as six in 2010
and they are going to struggle next time around.

Nothing very obvious has improved within the Lesnes ward since the Conservatives came to power.
Parking has become more difficult and much more expensive and we now have a main road on which two
buses have difficulty passing. That’s about it if you don’t count the silly eight
inch high fence around the park which is supposed to keep motorcyclists out. At
least it works against wheel chairs. If anyone can think of a single improvement
in Lesnes ward since 2010 (or even 2006) for which Bexley council is directly
responsible please tell me about it.

You
don’t usually see politicians around these parts, not even on polling day outside the
polling station but if Twitter comments are to be believed both Conservative and
Labour have been out in force canvassing. I suspect a degree of optimism has
been employed, both claim support. Neither party has knocked on my door and I would
have been happy to give the Tories a warm welcome too.

Probably the Labour candidate knows he doesn’t have to call, we‘ve spoken
at council meetings so he will know my views already. His Tory counterparts
Elizabeth Anderson and Keima Allen
showed up once at the Civic Centre but only to crawl up cabinet members’ backsides with
planted questions.

The only politician I have seen on my doorstep in the past eight years, it could be longer, is
Chris Attard of UKIP.

It’s
six months since a member of the Tory party in Sidcup tipped me off that
councillor Jackie Evans was seriously ill and was sadly unfit to do her job. Her
attendances at council meetings had been reduced to the statutory minimum of
once in six months and she last put in an appearance on 17th July.

Throughout this year Sidcup has been deprived of representation and the whole
borough has had to pay for a councillor who because of her tragic illness has
been unable to contribute anything.

If democracy was to be served an election should have been called months ago.
Mick Barnbrook twice wrote to Teresa O’Neill about it and was twice refused an
answer. As with too many things in Bexley, the root of the dishonesty,
corruption, criminality or whatever can be laid at her door.

Untruthful reports to the police, protecting criminals in her midst, dodging the
full declaration of members’ interests (Bexley has more dodgers than the rest of
London combined), you name a political trick, Teresa will be at it. The Jackie
Evans situation is just one more example.

The moment the clock ticked within six months of the next election Teresa
O’Neill has given her approval for councillor Evans’ resignation. There can be
no possibility of a by-election now. Poor Jackie
should have been permitted to relinquish her position a long time ago. It would
have been the humane thing to do but nothing can be allowed to get in the way of
the great dictator.

I was criticised in some quarters for first alluding to this subject last June.
Unkind, some thought. But surely not nearly as unkind as making councillor Evans
jump through hoops to suit the leader’s political ends. No doubt everyone will
wish Jackie Evans well.

In
August 2012
Bexley council was ordered to pay Welling resident Josephine Robbins a great deal
of money. The arrogance towards Mrs. Robbins shown by Bexley council was reported in the
Evening Standard and
the News Shopper. What the press don’t seem to have picked up is that Bexley council’s
arrogance extended to appealing against Justice Edwards-Stuart’s ruling.

There is not much about it on the web because legal matters are too often
restricted to the legal profession but you may wish to Google for ‘Josephine
Robbins Bexley’ to see if you can do any better than I have. However I can tell
you that a month ago Bexley council had their appeal thrown out by three judges
sitting in the High Court. Bexley council are not very good at this sort of
thing are they? I am reminded of how
Rita Groootendorst made monkeys of Bexley
council when she had their case against her kicked out in a Bromley courtroom.

I do not know how much this bad decision by Bexley council has cost us all but
in the absence of a useful web link I offer the complete judgment for your
perusal. I can’t tell you how I got hold of it and please accept my apologies
for it being a less than web-friendlyMicrosoft Word document. (110KB.)

Note: Thanks to a reader from Welling,
a PDF version is now available (201KB.)

It was remiss of me to not bother looking up how big the
Mayor’s allowance is
yesterday but now I have, and it is even more than I would have guessed.

Last
year Alan Downing was paid £14,754 on top of his £10,529 councillor allowance and his wife got another
£18,220. Not a bad little bonus for a couple living on a generous police pension.

The residents of Bexley are
the worst paid in London but they were expected to contribute the average borough income to a man whose job
involved little but being ferried around in a limousine to where the wine
flowed freely. And then insulting local dignitaries but maybe I shouldn’t say
any more about that.

The current Mayor Sharon Massey has not so far
jabbed any resident in the eye
or written to them to complain
their clapping wasn’t loud enough but is
the subject of a serious complaint which I’ve not yet reported here because of
its complexity. Nevertheless it is not hard to admit that the present mayor
has shown a very different and welcome public face from her predecessors.

Sharon sought publicity in the Bexley Times last week referring to the £15,000 she had
raised for charity this year. “The money raised will be used to provide respite
care for carers in Bexley and to support children with type one diabetes.” All
good stuff I am sure and probably very necessary. A couple of weeks ago I heard from
a carer being given respite care in Bexley who was concerned to have had a
phone call to say it had been withdrawn - in a case which could hardly be more
traumatic, time consuming and life threatening. Perhaps Sharon’s charity will go a little way to
reverse the cuts being imposed by her own council.

The £15,000 mayor Sharon Massey has raised for charity is neatly matched by almost
exactly the same sum she pockets from public funds. The charitable activities look
good but when will she write to the newspapers extolling the virtues respite being withdrawn from
someone 100% tied down by caring responsibilities. The mayoral allowance would, at the rate Bexley
pays care workers, see about 40 borough carers retain their monthly respite allowance.

Note: The mayor’s own family sadly suffers from diabetes,
hence it being one of her chosen charities. Both Masseys take round £45,000 from
public funds. Quite modest compared to the chief troughers. Cheryl and Gareth Bacon.
N.B. In spite of appearances, it is not actually an electoral requirement for
councillors to come in pairs, but in Bexley it is almost the norm.
Carers respite care: Bexley council has been providing five hours a month of
cover to allow the carer to get out of the house. Now under threat.

As measured by correspondence received, councillor Cheryl Bacon has knocked
councillor Peter Craske from Bexley’s top spot. For being Bexley’s most
accomplished purveyor of untrue statements that is.

Whilst there appears to be 100% acceptance by correspondents that Cheryl Bacon’s story is
totally discredited, advice on where to go next with it varies. Most advice, in fact
pretty much all of it, says keep on putting the boot in but it has also been
suggested that I should go back to reporting what others do and for the reporter
to get involved in the fray is somehow unseemly.

Fundamentally I agree and in the past I’ve had some minor arguments with the
crew who now call themselves the Bexley Action Group (see picture) because they wanted me to
directly engage in their activities; the FOIs, the questions to council, the
petitions, the complaints etc. but I prefer to be the reporter, and not only
because there is no time for anything else.

Never asking questions, not usually complaining and avoiding FOI requests has paid dividends several
times but there will always be limits to restraint.
Bexley’s obscene blog must be an
obvious exception but Bacon‘s libellous statement is a little more debatable. I
suspect if I had left the complaining to Mick Barnbrook almost as much could be
made of it and the case would still be going to the police etc. Complaining
about Cheryl Bacon’s lies may not have been my best decision but what is done is done
and I don’t regret it.

It has been suggested (I paraphrase here) that having beaten Will Tuckley to a
pulp I should lay off him because it is now obvious to all that there is no
truth in Bacon’s claim I was rampaging out of control in the council chamber on
19th June. There is, I’m told, no longer any need to save my reputation.

I’m not sure that was ever my aim, much more likely is that I saw an opportunity
to expose another councillor as a liar and impetuously rushed in.

My
own reputation doesn’t matter very much, not within certain limits anyway. At
my age I shall never again go looking for a job, apply for credit, look for new
friends on a dating site or apply for membership of the Conservative party. I am
pretty much immune from that sort of pressure. Being falsely accused of calling out and
waving papers at a council meeting is not exactly life changing for anyone,
certainly not for me. To be honest I wish I had been born with the guts to stand in
Nicholas Dowlings’ shoes
asking to record Cheryl’s meeting,
but I haven’t got what it takes, hence the hiding away in silence while Bacon made a fool of herself.

Bacon on the other hand has political aspirations and husband Gareth
hob-nobs with Boris Johnson for a king’s ransom and
Will Tuckley gets an even bigger one for doing very little. They have reputations
to protect and whilst it is arguably unkind to hand them as much publicity as possible
I have long since lost any sympathy for them. These are the people who
are content to see Bexley residents put behind bars based on the lies they tell.

Will Tuckley may well be baiting me as one friend suggests but so long as I
always report the truth and he supports a liar he can’t damage me very much.
Where I agree with the friend is that Tuckley has probably already lined up the Local
Government Ombudsman and the police via Common Purpose or whatever to ensure
that Bexley council is immune from official criticism. But does that really
matter? It all helps show just how far corruption goes within the British establishment.

Whether I shall personally complain to the outside bodies or pass my file
to Mr. Barnbrook to handle is currently in the lap of the gods.

May I thank those who were prepared to spend time giving me the benefit of their
thoughts? Most people simply sit on the sidelines and while they do so Bexley
council will remain the dishonest organisation it undoubtedly is.

Tuckley is unlikely to have an answer to
my last message so with luck the
subject will not arise again until next year. I’ve not sent a single Christmas
card yet and I really ought to do something about it.

I’m still working through old emails and a week old comment says that Bonkers
is hard to get into. The complaint is not one of site navigation but that only long
term readers will understand how an individual blog fits into the bigger
picture. That is probably true and if I think of a solution I’ll implement it.

New readers might do worse than look at some of the old Home pages all of which
have been salted away. (Go to
Site map and scroll down to the very end.)
Together they shed light on some of Bexley council’s worst excesses.

Two emails say I should recruit a team to run the blog. I can’t see that working
either, I get spammers daily pleading to be allowed to write articles for BiB
but no locals are silly enough to get involved in the nuts and bolts. Even if
they did, how could the editorial consistency and integrity be maintained? I
think I am trapped.

A subject that frequently crops up, known to old timers as ‘the obscene blog’,
might be a mystery to newcomers. It is, despite the odds, not yet dead after 31 months.
Some people are hoping it can be kept alive until next Spring because there is a
plan afoot to drop a summary of the case through every letter box in the Sidcup
and Lamorbey ward before the election. The subject is in need of a small update
but first, for new readers…

• In May 2011 someone posted obscenities on the web under my name. The content made it obvious it was the work of someone at Bexley council.
• The matter was reported to Teresa O’Neill and Will Tuckley and a couple of hours
later the filth disappeared. They subsequently said that was pure coincidence.
• The police were reluctant to accept a crime report but
did so
on 8th June only to say ten weeks later that they were unable to investigate due
to lack of evidence.
• When questioned the police refused to discuss the matter claiming it was not in
the public interest.
• A formal complaint went to the Met. Commissioner covering the period June to
August 2011 and at the end of 2012 (yes
2012 not 2011) Sergeant Michelle Gower from the Directorate of Professional
Standards said Bexley police had done a pretty much perfect job.
• That verdict was challenged and the Independent Police Complaints
Commission (IPCC) agreed that Sergeant Gower’s report was what most people would
call a whitewash. The original complaint is now being reinvestigated and
the outcome is not yet known.

So here we are almost in 2014 and the police are still investigating their own
August 2011 decision to bury Bexley council’s crime as soon as they decently could.

After that date, pressure from two local MPs ensured the case was reopened. The
police say that the MPs had little to do with it and the real reason was new evidence
which came to light. Before the end of 2011 the depraved blog had been traced to an IP address
used by Bexley Conservative councillor Peter Craske. However that renewed investigation hit the
buffers too. According to the police it failed because of political interference
and ultimately lack of evidence.

One reason for the latter might be the police’s decision
to wait from the Autumn of 2011 to 21st June 2012 before conducting any search
of councillor Craske’s premises. The police’s excuse was that they spent all
that time making sure I had not somehow set up councillor Craske by some
ingenious high-tech method well beyond my skillset. Why it took about eight
months and did not involve interviewing me is one of life’s mysteries.

So that’s the background, here’s the new stuff.

A letter received from the IPCC yesterday said that a complaint covering the
period September 2011 to January 2013 centred on the political interference and
the search warrant delay is now with the Metropolitan Police.
It would appear that under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011
the police are allowed to make the decision whether they or the IPCC is the
appropriate body for new complaints. Presumably whoever drafted that Act must
have been under the illusion that the police are as pure as the driven snow.

The second complaint stars Chief Superintendent Victor Olisa and several officers
who misled me through most of 2012, the earlier complaint featured his
predecessor Dave Stringer et al.

Three years spent seeking an honest response from the police might seem a lot
but my daughter and her partner have been at it for 26 years. On the other hand
I suppose ensuring a critic placed his head in the path of a swinging axe is in
a different league from protecting a councillor. As far as I know, even Teresa
O’Neill has not hired an axeman yet. #justice4daniel for the relevant Twitter feed.

My response to Will Tuckley’s letter
has been on his desk since lunchtime and the people (two actually) who found
it on line before this late evening blog seem to think I have let him off
lightly. That is to misunderstand the strategy. No one I know of writes to
Bexley council expecting to get an honest answer. The name of the game is to
block as many escape routes as possible and see which way they jump. It doesn’t
really matter what they do, invent another lie or say nothing. The lack of truth
always presents a new opportunity to cause Bexley council maximum embarrassment.

The primary purpose of today’s email is to make it that bit more difficult for the Local
Government Ombudsman, the Information Commissioner and the police to back Bexley council
as will be their natural inclination. The delays those bodies regard as the norm
should allow this business to be dragged out until next year’s elections,
it won’t be difficult, Bexley’s obscene blog, traced to councillor Peter Craske’s phone
line, is still bobbing along nicely, the Independent Police Complaints Commission wrote to me
again about that only this week.

If Tuckley is worried about wasting public money on complaint handling he should give a thought
as to what his failure to ‘shop’ Craske has cost the taxpayer. From what little I know it must have
crashed the £50,000 barrier by now. Far from ‘shopping him’ Tuckley poked his nose in
with the Crown Prosecution Service. As the Detective Sergeant said, Regina v Craske
was crippled by political interference. I blame Teresa O’Neill.

Tuckley, I accept, has been dealt a very poor hand. A whole host of lies by
councillor Cheryl Bacon compounded by Mrs. Lynn Tyler’s failure to spot the
inconsistencies in the witnesses’ statements distributed under FOI has not made
his job any easier. The fact that half the statements were disowned by their authors
is just the icing on the cake.

Uncle Will’s ‘catch all’ that anyone who knows someone who falls foul of council rules is
equally guilty is both sinister, pathetic and genius all at the same time. That perverse
ruling surely indicates Tuckley knows the truth but with the supreme leader controlling his
quarter million pound purse strings a change of direction is impossible. No one is free of
O’Neill’s evil influence. One councillor wrote of being burned alive if the boss discovered our
correspondence. Make no mistake, while Teresa O’Neill runs Bexley council, it’s core will
always be rotten.

I have been trying to make sense of
Will Tuckley’s letter and spent several
hours drafting an email response today. Unfortunately I have discovered that
Microsoft Outlook has been saving only the first few words of my email so after
I took a break and turned off the computer I found that it had lost everything.
Unbelievably this phenomenon is repeatable, test emails save to Drafts but
subsequent saves do not update it. I was quite pleased with my initial email but
the second attempt is turning out to be rather different and I’m not sure it is
good enough yet.

I shall sleep on it until tomorrow, meanwhile here’s a blog I wrote a
few days ago and decided wasn’t good enough, but thanks to Bill Gates and his
inadequate software it looks like nothing better is available - and several
readers have said I shouldn’t let up on Bexley council even for a day. Probably
they are right.

It must be difficult for a man not present at
Cheryl Bacon’s
meeting to argue convincingly against someone who was and took timed notes of every development,
especially so when that man cannot consult more widely than Cheryl herself for fear of uncovering
the truth. Probably that is why Will Tuckley has to resort to repeating her lies.
Whilst I did “engage” with committee staff before the meeting the engagement was not of my choosing.
John Adams chose to brusquely eject me from my chosen desk and in return I
told him in similar terms that I would have to insist on him providing me with
another as the law requires. I apologised to the doorman for putting him to the
trouble of finding another table because i had previously told him I wouldn’t
require one.

I’m not sure if “commenting on the position” is a reference to the stand off
over recording or the location of the provided table but the fact is I commented
on neither.

Stuck for a sensible argument Tuckley comes up with this nonsense…
Everyone was sitting in the seats to which committee officer John Adams had
directed us. Me in solitary splendour well away from everyone else. What further
steps was I supposed to take?

It is not clear from Tuckley’s letter whether he has totally ignored my request
to consult with the councillor who spent much of the meeting looking in my
direction or not. If he did one might have expected him to say so but on the
other hand there is the implication that he agrees I said nothing but everyone
was excluded because all the attendees at the meeting were known to each other.

I think I should ask him for clarification before referring the case elsewhere.

Obviously a stage in the Cheryl Bacon affair will be sending a file of papers
to the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) to see what excuses they can come up with in
defence of Bexley council. Meanwhile I’m not yet sure how I will respond directly to Will Tuckley’s
suggestion that it doesn’t matter how well you behave while attending council
meetings, if your name is associated with someone who has embarrassed them, both
can expect the same treatment. Ditto his suggestion that someone who confines his
complaints to the council’s criminal acts is trivialising the complaints procedure.

I appreciate that Tuckley is desperately looking for new excuses for
the lying
Conservative councillor but he doesn’t do himself any favours with such
nonsense and I am concerned that despite my best efforts he is still ignorant of
what I complained about.

The Chief Executive makes no comment on my suggestion that he should interview
the councillor with the best view of what happened or the one who has indicated a willingness to speak on my behalf. The
lack of comment may indicate the depth of Bexley’s corruption or perhaps simply the incompetence of
those who draft Tuckley’s letters. When I write to the LGO I would like to be sure which it is.

While
mulling over the whole subject I took myself for a stroll in the late Autumn
sunshine. There are no trains through Abbey Wood this weekend due to Crossrail
works but apart from the
white vans belonging to signalling contractors there was nothing interesting to see.

The best photo I could came up was this one adorning what was the Felixstowe
Road car park. A product of the English education system or the Polish?

A walk through the picturesque Lesnes Abbey park and woods might convince a stranger
that access is restricted to dog walkers but I went anyway. Whilst the abbey
ruins and the arborilogical colours can be a delight to the eye the view to the north is
less so. The remnants of nineteen sixties Thamesmead are being demolished or improved but the
skyline gets ever more ugly.

Tower blocks still dominate the view and the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower is too
far away to be a serious blot on the landscape but the River Roding flood defences,
poisonous plumes from the Normandy Road incinerator and the occasionally malodorous
Crossness sewage disposal works are ‘interesting’ rather than things of beauty.

In the same category are the electricity bill inflating wind turbines which have recently risen to five in
number. That pictured is less than a week old and at Crossness. The Erith turbine is out of sight
around the bend of the Thames.

Unfortunately I saw nothing while walking to inspire my next letter to Will Tuckley but
the irony of Bexley council’s flag flying at half mast when they have just told me that
their segregation policy at meetings is based on which ‘tribe’ I might be
associated with rather than who I am or how I behave, did not go unnoticed.

Last week I resisted the temptation to post blogs built on very little when new
material is in short supply which produced two emotions. One was the relief of not
having to think of a subject and the other was the feeling I was letting the side down.

While I flip-flopped between the two and even told a few people that
I was thinking of abandoning BiB along came Will Tuckley with his threats which tipped
the balance heavily in one direction. How ironic that if Bexley council had been
honest and accepted that Cheryl Bacon made the wrong call on 19th June, provoking
a guidance note for future reference
being sent to all councillors, there would still be nothing to write about. A little bit of honesty could have
killed Bonkers, but no, Bexley council had to lie, reinforce them at the most
senior level and then show they had lost the argument by issuing toothless
threats. It comes naturally to them.

Yesterday’s blog was posted with
some trepidation. Is anyone still interested in Bexley council’s inbuilt corruption? The fact
that a senior councillor is a law breaker and liar? The fact that council officers feel compelled
to back the councillors in their lying at every stage? I need not have worried. The blog brought
forth a goodly number of comments from readers.

One made reference, in a supportive way, to the fact that councils cannot sue
for libel. That is true as a Welsh council recently discovered to its cost, but
the issue doesn’t worry me very much. There has been no need to make up or
exaggerate reports beyond recognition. I accept Bonkers may dwell on all that is
bad about Bexley council which is why
background documentation is provided for readers to form their own
opinion should they wish to. Although it hasn’t pleased Mr. Tuckley,
the complete correspondence trail on the Bacon affair is on line.

I am absolutely confident that BiB reports on councillor Cheryl
Bacon’s mismanagement of the Public
Realm meeting and her attempts to lie herself out of trouble have been factually accurate
and in that I am not completely alone. These comments are extracted from the
correspondence which followed Bacon’s meeting and her lies…

• Councillor Bacon took arbitrary action.
• These issues are only the most obvious in a pattern to keep accountability at bay.
• Members of the public were treated with contempt.
• If I am asked about who said what etc. at Bacon’s scrutiny meeting I would be absolutely clear.
•
[Identification clues redacted] were dignity personified.

…and all of those are by concerned councillors. I originally listed ten such comments but
five should be enough to be going on with and I do not wish to offer too many
clues as to who, from both parties, may have sent them.

Maybe councillors have good reason to be concerned if more recent emails give an
insight into the typical reaction by voters who get to know the truth about Bexley council.

Love the site. I’ve lived in Bexley many years and always voted blue. Thanks to
your site, not any more.
My question, well request, is that you stand in May. I think it would be good for Bexley.
From your blog yesterday it seems they want to restrict you/your blog. You can’t let this happen.
Hopefully we will get some Libs, Greens, UKIP, English Dem or anyone that will
be able to act free from council whip. I will only be voting for smaller parties
or independents in May.

As someone who has only ever voted Blue myself,
I too share those sentiments. In my view the iron fisted control freakery and
corruption within Bexley council comes from its leader. I shall refrain from
quoting councillors who feel the same, but I could, and where else do you think
the “political interference” in a police investigation would have come from?

It is time to give the smaller parties a chance (†). I understand that
UKIP intend to
put at least one candidate in each ward and I am aware of a small number of
independents planning to throw their hats into the ring. More independents should
come forward but I’ve seen no sign of it and I will not be one of them.

If Tuckley’s latest letter
had not persuaded me that Bonkers must continue then emails like this might well have done…

I have followed every word and am always always grateful for your explicit and
carefully worded reports of the ‘goings on’ in the council offices and the wider
borough. You are indeed a very special person with great fortitude and
resilience, and I for one salute you…

Well I think we have had quite enough of that for one day!

† I am not a natural Labour voter but Danny Hackett my candidate down in Lesnes ward has more than once shown himself to be
very honest and straight dealing. But will he be able to resist the party machine? That is the question.

Will
Tuckley has added his name to those willing to support
the lying Bexley
councillor Cheryl Bacon and has followed much the same path as his minions faced
with defending the indefensible. He has ignored the parts of my complaint which
would prove Bacon a liar and retaliated with threats. I suppose if it is a toss up
between supporting a law breaking councillor and risking a quarter million pound
salary, honesty is likely to go flying out of the window.

To prove his worth Tuckley has come up with a new excuse for law breaking. Anyone who sits
near a member of the public who the council may have reason to bar from a meeting will
be deemed to be associated with that person and similarly barred whether they
are entirely innocent bystanders or not.

The problem with that line of defence is that I wasn’t sitting near to
Nicholas Dowling and his audio
recorder on 19th June, I was sitting where the council directed me to do so. I have for a
year or more tried to sit away from Nicholas and his friends because of their habit of whispering
directly into my ear and hindering note taking. Recently the council has decreed that everyone
recording a meeting should sit together which isn’t helping in that regard.

So let’s begin taking Tuckley’s question dodging apart. He has adopted the “vexatious” line so
beloved of corrupt councils everywhere. I am accused of being a serial complainer whose activities
must be curtailed. If he had stopped to think he may have noticed that I did not complain about
Cheryl Bacon stopping everyone from attending her public meeting as several others did. I did
nothing until I discovered that Tuckley’s council was answering those complaints by broadcasting
lies about me; naming me and implying I was one of a gang rampaging through the chamber.

When
I eventually complained,
nearly three months after the illegally closed meeting, that I had said and done absolutely nothing
to deserve being libelled I made a simple request…

I must ask you to widen your enquiries so as to confirm my account; several
councillors were able to look straight at me and did. They will not be hard to
find. I want to know who it was who labelled me disruptive either personally or
by a broad-brush statement.

I sent it directly to Will Tuckley and it was my first complaint since I wrote to him
in June 2011 after councillor Peter Craske’s internet connection mysteriously generated
a stream of obscenities
directed at me and three other residents.

Mr. Tuckley did not see fit to answer but the Legal Officer Lynn
Tyler did so and ignored my request totally. I was asked to respond to Director
Paul Moore if I was not satisfied with Tyler’s response which I did. I did not complain
about my illegal exclusion from the meeting, that in my view is a relatively minor
issue which proves only that councillor Cheryl Bacon is a useless committee
chairman undeserving of her £2,200 a session fee. Cheryl Bacon being an industrial scale liar is far more serious.

This is part of what I said to Mr. Moore…

My complaint was that councillor Bacon had written untruthful statements about myself
and others and that these were being sent to other members of the public labelling me a
trouble maker when the fact is I sat quietly and said absolutely nothing during the meeting.

As you know from other correspondence, I have written support for that statement from members
of both political parties.

If I may summarise the position, councillor Bacon accused a group of people
including myself of creating a disturbance, none of your chosen witnesses
confirmed it and more than a handful of witnesses are ready to confirm that the
disturbance described by councillor Bacon did not take place. Two senior council
officers have strenuously supported councillor Bacon's account despite neither
of them being at the meeting and having only councillor Bacon's account to fall
back on. This is as stupid as it is dishonest. I trust you will be the first to
explore the avenues I have indicated to arrive at the truth.

Mr. Moore may not have been willing to be the one who discovered the truth
so he didn’t reply.

On 23rd September
I additionally complained about Mrs. Tyler spreading Bacon’s false allegations via
a Freedom of Information response. Once again my complaint was not about being excluded from the meeting…

Presumably no one at the Civic Centre has been prepared to speak the truth on
the record but I know, and have evidence, that others are fully aware of what
the council is doing and suitably ashamed of it. If this situation is not to
escalate further may I suggest you call a meeting with Councillor Slaughter who
was nearest to me and should know exactly what I did at that meeting and with
the Hallkeeper so that he can confirm that he did not accompany the police to
the Council Chamber, and myself, all present.

I referred to councillor June Slaughter because I was sitting very close to her
and she exchanged several ‘knowing glances’ with me while I remained mute. There
were others I could name but she was closest and I felt she might be ready to
speak the truth if approached. The reply came from Human Resources manager Nick
Hollier who decided it would be best not to pursue the truth. He was unwilling
to look beyond the statement by the lying Cheryl Bacon.

Because I also asked for the Hallkeeper’s confirmation that the police entered
the chamber alone (the council had claimed the Hallkeeper was otherwise occupied monitoring entry to
the reconvened meeting) they had to belatedly write a statement for him - one
which in my presence the Hallkeeper denied making.

So we have now got to the stage when I have several times made it clear that my
complaint is about Bacon’s lies and not my exclusion from the meeting and twice
asked senior officers to seek the truth from third parties and none of them are
prepared to do so. What does that tell us?

Tuckley now wishes to close down the correspondence and impose sanctions on me. Tuckley says my “continued accusations against individual officers are not
accepted as fair or reasonable commentary” and he will be required “to take
steps to protect staff generally from the unwarranted attack that you have
subjected them to through your website”. If I continue he will be…
You’d expect better research from someone on a quarter of a million a year. I
addressed all of the Bacon related complaints to Tuckley except in one case when
directed by the council to do otherwise. In the previous three years I have written
once to Tuckley, a couple of times seeking permission to take photographs to
addresses provided by the Contact Centre, and occasionally replied to council staff who have initiated correspondence.
Sanctions one and two will change nothing.

Then Tuckley says that councillors lying, as Bacon undoubtedly has, and councillors committing arrestable offences is
“trivial”, for if he had checked his facts he would know that I have complained
about nothing else. It is interesting to note that the Chief Executive of Bexley
council regards criminal acts as trivial.

If Tuckley is concerned about cost pressures he might consider whether
responding to my first request “I must ask you to widen your enquiries so as to
confirm my account” instead of refusing to do so and thereby provoking follow up
complaints might not have been by far the cheapest, not to mention the most
honest response.

I have named two council officers while covering this issue. One is Mrs. Lynn Tyler about whom I said…

I understand that Mrs. Tyler is the council’s Principal Legal Officer
and, I would assume, bound by certain professional ethics so perhaps it is
reasonable to assume she is merely relaying the information she was fed and I
should not blame her directly for the fabrication.

…and also Mr. Nick Hollier who I no doubt exposed to ridicule because he said a single use
of the word ‘lying’ in a complaint about lying was “hostile, abusive, offensive and unreasonable”.
I asked Tuckley to identify the abusive parts of my email but he has failed to come up
with any. Then the question dodger wonders why he keeps getting repetitive and expensive complaints.

Councillor Cheryl Bacon has lied comprehensively, numerous councillors know it,
several have been prepared to say so and a small number have made their views
clear in writing. Would the L word be repeated so often if the evidence
for it was not plentiful?

The
long delayed complaint about Bexley police’s failure to charge anyone over
Bexley council’s obscene blog even though they traced the source to
councillor Peter Craske’s IP address has been sent to the Independent Police
Complaints Commission. The main points are the eight months that elapsed between
finding Craske’s IP address and deciding to apply for a search warrant for his
address and the police admission that the case had been hampered by “political
interference”.

Of more recent interest, the eight month old Home page
has been replaced by another
recording the lies
told by Bexley council and councillor Cheryl Bacon that I and others were
shouting and waving papers and generally making nuisances of ourselves at the
Public Realm
meeting on 19th June. It is a total
lie and I was among several who said and did absolutely nothing. For those who have
followed the story closely it is perhaps a bit repetitive but I believe that Cheryl
Bacon’s astounding set of lies requires a more permanent and accessible record than
a dozen or more blogs.

An accident of timing is that within minutes of completing that new Home page
Bexley council attempted to answer my complaint about Bacon’slies. A three page letter from Chief
Executive Will Tuckley complains about my accusation that various people have
lied and threatens me with various things. I shall have fun dissecting his
letter in due course. It has not gone unnoticed that he has answered trivial
points of no great interest to me, but
like Mr. Hollier before him, has done
nothing to seek the truth beyond reading councillor Bacon’s false assertions.

Tuckley claims to have read Bonkers but is apparently unaware that I have emails from
within Bexley council which support my contention that Bacon and her paid
lackeys are simply not telling the truth. Bexley council rarely does.

If
you have tried to get from Erith to Bexleyheath over the past month you will
know that the most direct route is unavailable due to one way traffic over the
railway line at Erith. It has left Northumberland Heath and the old industrial
estates of Erith without a bus service (routes 229 and 99 respectively) and things
will not improve until the end of the month.

The bridge has long been a bottleneck and in September 2011 Bexley council
granted itself planning permission to replace it and more recently obtained funding
for that replacement so I assumed that the current work was in preparation for that. But
sadly no. The two months of work going on now is just a maintenance job.

The street level notices say that the work is going on underneath but these
photographs taken around 2pm last Friday suggest that may not always be the case.
Hugh Neal over at the
Maggot Sandwich will cover this issue in rather more detail today.

When Belvedere’s Asda store was approved the planning officers said that the
extra traffic caused would take nearby roads to the limit of the capacity. With much of
the Bexley bound traffic and the 99 bus diverted past Asda and up the 1 in 10
hill of Picardy Road, grid lock has frequently been the result. Now we are due
to have a year or more of such disruption when the bridge is replaced. Bexley
council is seeking the support of businesses to try to get extra funding which
might mitigate the inevitable chaos. Has there been any time within the past
four years when Bexley’s roads have not been massively disrupted?